Part Five: The Café in Roma
We met them at a café in the Roma neighborhood. Rodrigo had chosen it: public, visible, with ambient noise enough that voices would need to be slightly raised to carry.
I arrived first and sat at a corner table. I put my phone on the table, recording. I put the folder with the trust documents in my bag.
Valeria arrived with my parents. She walked in with the confidence of someone who had already won something, which was the confidence she used most often.
“Did you sign?” she asked, before sitting.
I placed my hand on the envelope without opening it.
“First,” I said, “tell me why you didn’t come to Mateo’s funeral.”
My mother arranged her expression into something resembling sorrow. “We’ve already discussed this—”
“You haven’t discussed it with me. You sent me a message about trust documents before the earth was settled on his grave.”
“Mariana,” my father said, with the tone of a man imposing patience on an unreasonable situation. “You’re upset. That’s understandable. But we’re here to talk about—”
“Why didn’t you come.”
Several nearby tables had quieted. The café’s background noise shifted.
Valeria crossed her arms. “Rodrigo’s family was there. We couldn’t just—”
“I have the photographs.” I put my phone on the table and turned it to face them. “Twenty-three minutes before I answered the cemetery worker’s question about whether to finish. Twenty-three minutes. You were lifting champagne flutes.”
Valeria’s color changed.
“You’re making a scene,” she said.
“I’m telling the truth,” I said. “I’ve been confused about the difference for a long time, but I’ve worked it out now.”
I took the trust documents from the envelope. I showed them to Valeria, to my parents, to the table where they sat having assumed they had already won this.
“Santiago’s trust stipulates,” I said, “that in the event of Mateo’s death, I am the sole beneficiary. There is no provision, no clause, no mechanism by which anyone at this table inherits any authority over these funds.”
My father leaned forward. “If you do not cooperate, we will make your life very difficult.”
“I know,” I said. “You’ve told me that since I was a child. It used to work.”
Valeria’s composure broke. Her voice rose above the café noise.
“You don’t even deserve that money! Mateo is gone! What do you want it for?”
The café went quiet.
I put the documents back in the envelope. I stood up. I picked up my bag.
“I know what I want it for,” I said.
I left.
